by Kevin Kulp Swords of the Serpentine is a swords and sorcery game that’s fundamentally about your actions changing the world around you. One of the ways it does that is by giving you tools to manipulate political factions in your fantasy city or world. Politics in Fantasy Literature Every fantasy setting has political factions, […]
Tag Archives: Kevin Kulp
Social Combat in Swords of the Serpentine When words cut as sharply as a knife, you don’t actually need to carry a knife. Whenever Smaug’s roving eye, seeking for him in the shadows, flashed across him, he trembled, and an unaccountable desire seized hold of him to rush out and reveal himself and tell all […]
by Kevin Kulp It’s not an obvious choice, but the new high-damage combat system makes Swords of the Serpentine work in some very interesting ways. When I tell a Trail of Cthulhu player that there’s a swords & sorcery game using GUMSHOE, they sometimes look concerned and ask me “…Why?” I laugh every time, in […]
by Kevin Kulp Pelgrane Press’s upcoming fantasy GUMSHOE game, Swords of the Serpentine, has any number of ways to be a hero. Investigative abilities define the knowledge and abilities you use to gather leads and clues while adventuring. Swords of the Serpentine has shared General and Investigative abilities that are available to any Hero, but […]
The Swords of the Serpentine playtest is now live! SotS is the upcoming fantasy GUMSHOE game from Kevin Kulp (TimeWatch) and Emily Dresner (the Dungeonomics column at www.critical-hits.com). The full game will be available in 2019, traditionally published by Pelgrane Press with advance pre-orders, and we’ll open up those pre-orders in the months before publication. […]
Swords of the Serpentine, by Emily Dresner and Kevin Kulp, is Fantasy GUMSHOE as seen through a lens of classic swords and sorcery. That means different things to different people, though, so we wanted to share with you the set of collected guidelines we’ve used when writing the game. Adventures are episodic. Months or years […]
We’ve worked with Jérôme Huguenin on many of our covers, and he never fails to amaze and astound us with beautiful art. His latest creation is the cover for the upcoming GUMSHOE core game Swords of the Serpentine, by Kevin Kulp and Emily Dresner, which you can see below. To see more of Jérôme’s art, like and […]
Only 100 copies of the limited edition exist. 50 are available to customers in the U.S. and Canada, and 50 are available to customers outside the U.S. and Canada. The limited edition books are faux-leatherbound with foil, and each one includes a sticky-backed bookplate signed by Kevin Kulp, which you can add to your book. […]
On 1st May 1895 a young gentleman — a recently admitted solicitor from the West Country — called upon the offices of Pelgrane Press bearing a manuscript loosely bound in waxed paper and string, together with a small steamer trunk packed with an assortment of curios. Acting under instructions from his anonymous client, he passed […]
By Kevin Kulp Owl Hoot Trail is a fantasy steampunk Western game (reviewed here and here) published by Pelgrane in 2013. Clinton R. Nixon wrote the core of the game that Matt Breen and I developed. Our aim wasn’t to make a Western-flavored fantasy game that felt like D&D with spurs; it was to make […]